


This Is Home

by paperxcrowns



Series: Dick and Dami Week 2021 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, English is a bitch, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Good Older Sibling Dick Grayson, Good Younger Sibling Damian Wayne, No editing we die like jason todd, Romani Dick Grayson, Sibling Bonding, Slice of Life, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, being bilangual is hard, chosen family, i am once again making dick a social worker, i wrote this in like 2 hours so yay me, ish, it really is, it's what he deserves honestly, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperxcrowns/pseuds/paperxcrowns
Summary: Damian doesn't get English, Dick relates.prompt: English as Second Language
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Series: Dick and Dami Week 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199357
Comments: 10
Kudos: 163
Collections: DickAndDamiWeek2021





	This Is Home

**Author's Note:**

> don't mind me piling up the bad decisions into one giant pile. i'm doing so many series at the same time it's not even funny anymore rippp
> 
> also, i gave Dick his own apartment bc he's an independent adult and he deserves it 😌

“Richard, I don’t understand.”

Damian was doing his English homework on the kitchen table of Dick’s apartment in Gotham while Dick was lounging on the couch reading a file for work. He was looking for some of the better orphanages Gotham had to offer, and it really wasn’t an easy task. Dick was really going to have to do something about that. Even with all of Bruce’s donations, the statistics didn’t look good.

Dick glanced up when Damian spoke.   
“What?” he asked.

It still warmed his heart that Damian felt comfortable enough around him to actually tell him he didn’t understand things and needed help instead of trying to figure it out on his own. It had taken a lot of work and patience to get there, but with Dick’s day job, those were two things he was most well acquainted to. 

Which led to Dick kidnapping Damian every weekend and letting him spend time at his place when he didn’t have any plans to spend the day with Bruce. It didn’t happen often enough, and rarely happened without nudging from Alfred or Dick.

“The grammar.”

Dick couldn’t believe Damian was going to be cryptic with him. The monosyllable answer was Bruce’s thing, and Damian wasn’t allowed to inherit it.

“Can you be a bit more specific, kiddo?” Dick asked, pushing himself upright.

Damian was still looking at his paper, his face twisted in an aggravated scowl. Damian didn’t speak much when he was angry, Dick had noticed early on. And it wasn’t a form of silent treatment, Dick had also had to learn through experience. If his meaning could be understood by a simple word or a dark glare, then that was how Damian was going to get his anger across. 

Dick tossed the files on the coffee table and standing up. He was gonna have to use his computer anyway, so he might as well take the time to help Damian out and make himself tea or something.

“What’s up with the grammar?” Dick asked, leaning over Damian’s shoulder and staring at his homework.

Damian huffed impatiently. “The teacher is making us write down what we did wrong in our essays and correcting it,” he replied. “He could simply tell us what was wrong with the essays instead of letting us figure it out on our own. I do not understand why he marked all of these wrong.”

Dick’s eyes scanned over the first page of the essay. Damian’s writing reflected his grade. There were lots of small grammatical errors every few sentences, things that really didn’t matter that much, but the first two paragraphs seemed concise enough that Dick understood the 89 Damian got. The errors made Dick smile a bit. They were errors people whose first language wasn’t English often made, and ones Dick had made countless times, and still made on occasion to this day. He hadn’t assumed Damian would have the same problems as Dick, being raised by the League of Assassins to be fluent in English along with many other languages.

The small mistakes were the most frustrating.

“I don’t think my English is really up to par,” Dick said. “I could text Jason, though. He’s the one you should ask all your questions to.”

He stepped away from Damian to fill up the electric kettle with tap water before setting it to boil.

“Why not? You went to the same school, I don’t see why your English would be flawed.”

Dick laughed as he pulled out two mugs and set them on the counter.

“I like the vote of confidence,” he said. “But English is unfortunately my second language too, and I still make grammatical errors.”

Damian perked up at that. “I always thought--”

“Actually, English is my--” Dick counted mentally. “If we’re going by the languages we first learned, then English is my fifth. It’s the one I speak most fluently, though.”

Damian stared at him. Had he really forgotten Damian didn’t know he was Romani and spoke his parents’ native tongue?

Dick shrugged. “I spoke--  _ speak-- _ Romani. And I picked up a few words in other languages at Haly’s including English. I’ve never spoken English fluently before Bruce took me in. And I kind of lost my mother tongue because there aren’t-- many Roma people around. Especially not in Gotham.”

The look of surprise was quickly wiped off Damian’s face. Dick was still trying to get him to understand that it was more than perfectly okay for him to express emotions without fear of punishment. 

“Is this your way of telling me you would rather have Todd help me?” he asked.

Dick grinned. He absolutely  _ loved it _ when the kid teased him. 

“I’m  _ saying _ that I can help you, but it’s gonna be mediocre at best because I sucked at English. You can ask Bruce and Alfred for the report cards and look at my shameful past.”

Damian cracked a smile. “I’m more than convinced that you are perfectly capable of assisting me. If you don’t want to, you can just tell me.”

Dick rolled his eyes. His work was going to have to wait, especially if he was helping the kid out with his  _ English _ homework. 

“Don’t get your feathers all ruffled up, of course I’ll help you.”

Dick turned his attention back to the tea, trying to mentally remember as many grammar rules as he could remember.

It wasn’t many.

Okay, it wasn’t a single one.

He just knew how the words worked, he couldn’t explain it. School was a social construct anyway, and Dick was twenty-six. He didn’t care for that anymore. 

“Black tea or something else?” he asked, opening another cupboard.

“Anything is fine,” he replied. “I just wish to get this done.”

Dick scoffed, pulling out two teabags from a tin box. Knowing himself and Damian, they were not about to get this done quickly. He was sure that within two hours, Damian would break first and tell him to get Jason here to help. 

That gave Dick an idea.

“Hey, you remember those game nights we used to do when-- when I was Batman?” he asked, turning his head so he could get a glimpse of Damian.

The kid shrugged, writing something on a sheet of notebook paper. “I suppose.”

“We should do those again. We could add Scrabble to the list of games.”

Damian’s eyes darted over to Dick quickly before focusing back down on the paper and essay before him; an invitation for him to continue talking. 

“It’s a word game. And I’ve played it a couple of times, I’m sure you’ll love it.”

Dick wasn’t going to go into the details of the game and the rules, because his memory was hazy at best, and he wasn’t the best at describing games, anyway.

He remembered game nights, many years ago, before Jason died, where Dick and Bruce always lost to Jason and his ridiculously long words. They often went to Google them because Bruce and Dick had refused to believe ridiculous words like that even existed. They did. 

“As long as we don’t invite Jason, you might just have a chance to win,” Dick said.

Damian made common grammatical errors, but the kid still had a much larger vocabulary than Dick had had at his age.

Damian shrugged. “I suppose we could do that. For educational purposes.”

Dick grinned. Yes, purely educational purposes. They were going to have so much fun.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm also on [tumblr ](https://blas-ph-emy.tumblr.com/)


End file.
